Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: September 14, 2026

 

The Marshall casebook is a free set of practice consulting cases built by students at USC's Marshall School of Business, and it works best as a supplement to stronger casebooks rather than as the backbone of your prep. This guide covers what is inside each edition, where to find it, which firms actually hire Marshall students, and how to practice with it so the reps translate into a better interview.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

The Marshall casebook gives you free, student-written practice cases that are useful for extra volume and math reps, but it is too thin to carry your preparation on its own.

You can download the casebook here: Marshall casebook.pdf

 

• Built by the Marshall Consulting & Strategy Club at USC to prepare its own members for consulting recruiting

 

• Editions from 2015 and 2022 circulate publicly, and neither one publishes a case count

 

• The front matter covers case flow, note-taking, and interview etiquette more than advanced structuring

 

• Skip the framework primer, because memorized templates now count against you at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain

 

• Consulting paid a $167,211 average starting salary for the USC Marshall Class of 2025, the highest of any industry

 

• Use it for additional reps once you have worked through two or three stronger casebooks

 

What Is the Marshall Casebook?

 

The Marshall casebook is a free collection of practice consulting cases compiled by students at USC's Marshall School of Business to prepare members of the Marshall Consulting & Strategy Club for case interviews. Editions circulate publicly as PDFs and pair full practice cases with front matter on case structure, math, and interview etiquette.

 

The club produces it as part of a broader recruiting program rather than as a standalone product. That program includes case workshops, second-year casing coaches, and a case certification program built around three mock interview days across the fall semester.

 

Understanding that context matters. The casebook was designed to be handed to a first-year MBA who already has a coach, a practice partner, and a workshop calendar, which is why it explains less on the page than the larger mba consulting casebooks from schools with bigger publication teams.

 

What Is Inside the Marshall Casebook?

 

The Marshall casebook opens with a short primer on how a case interview runs, then moves into practice cases. The 2022 edition frames the case as four moves: understand the prompt, build a structure, work through the analysis, and deliver a recommendation. It also spends real page count on the softer mechanics of organizing your notes and holding your composure.

 

The older material, which circulates as two separate parts, leads with eleven rules for casing. Those rules cover listening carefully, taking notes, restating the question, confirming the objective, asking clarifying questions, organizing your answer, thinking before you speak, managing time, working with numbers, staying coachable, and being creative.

 

Here is how the two circulating editions break down.

 

Section	What it covers	Is it worth your time
Case flow overview	Prompt, structure, analysis, recommendation	Yes, if you are new to casing. Skip it otherwise
Casing rules	Eleven behavioral habits, from listening to time management	Read once. The advice is sound but generic
Framework primer	Template structures applied to common case types	Skip. Modern interviews penalize memorized templates
Practice cases	Full prompts with data, questions, and sample answers	Yes. This is the reason to open the file
Interview resources	Pointers to outside prep material and firm information	Dated. Verify anything before you rely on it

 

The practice cases follow the standard archetypes you see everywhere in consulting recruiting. Expect profitability cases to appear more than any other type, followed by market entry, growth, and estimation problems.

 

Several cases open with a demand estimate before you can size the opportunity, so clean market sizing habits pay off across a large share of the book. Work those numbers by hand rather than skimming to the answer.

 

How Many Cases Are in the Marshall Casebook?

 

No Marshall edition publishes a headline case count, which sets it apart from most school casebooks. Kellogg, Columbia, and MIT Sloan all advertise their totals on the cover or in the table of contents, and Marshall does not.

 

The older material makes this more confusing, because it circulates as two separate files labeled Case Book 1 and Case Book 2 rather than one bound volume. People often download only the first part and assume they have the whole thing.

 

Do this before you build a schedule: open the file, scroll to the case section, and count the prompts yourself. Plan your practice around the real number instead of a figure someone quoted in a forum thread.

 

Where Can You Download the Marshall Casebook?

 

You can download the casebook here: Marshall casebook.pdf

Two versions circulate widely. The first is the 2015 material split into Case Book 1 and Case Book 2, and the second is a 2022 edition that adds preparation material and interview resources on top of its cases.

 

Which Firms Recruit USC Marshall Students for Consulting?

 

Consulting is the strongest-paying industry for USC Marshall MBAs, and knowing which firms actually show up on campus tells you which case styles to practice. According to USC Marshall's Full-Time MBA class profile, consulting carried a $167,211 average starting salary for the Class of 2025, ahead of financial services at $148,744 and technology at $136,056.

 

That same class saw 71% of graduates employed within 90 days, with an average salary of $142,184 and an average signing bonus of $35,896. In the school's Class of 2024 employment report, consulting was the single largest industry at 28% of the class, with a median base salary of $175,000.

 

Here are the firms Marshall lists among its recent employers, and what each one puts you through.

 

Firm	Where it appears	What to practice for it
McKinsey & Company	Class of 2025 full-time employers	Interviewer-led cases, tight math, and the Solve assessment
Bain & Company	Class of 2025 full-time employers	Candidate-led cases and a hypothesis you can defend early
Boston Consulting Group	Class of 2025 internship employers	Candidate-led cases plus an online case assessment
Kearney and L.E.K.	Full-time and internship employers	Exhibit-heavy cases with dense quantitative work
Deloitte, EY-Parthenon, PwC, KPMG	Full-time employers, Classes of 2024 and 2025	Shorter cases paired with heavy behavioral rounds

 

Look at that list and one thing jumps out. Marshall places well into Bain, McKinsey, and the strategy arms of the Big Four, which means the interviews you are preparing for are the same ones I ran at Bain, and student-written practice cases only get you part of the way there.

 

How Should You Use the Marshall Casebook to Prepare?

 

Use the Marshall casebook as a source of practice reps, not as a curriculum. Read the front matter once for the case flow, ignore the framework templates entirely, and spend all your time in the case section.

 

1. Skim the front matter once: get the four-move case flow in your head, then close that section and do not return to it
   
   
2. Pick five cases, not fifty: choose a spread across profitability, market entry, and estimation so you cover the archetypes rather than repeating one
   
   
3. Time yourself honestly: give yourself 90 seconds to structure and hold to it, because unlimited thinking time trains a habit no interviewer will allow
   
   
4. Speak every calculation out loud: silent math is the single most common reason strong candidates fail rounds they should have passed
   
   
5. Write a three-line debrief after each case: note what broke, what you would change, and one drill to fix it, then read that note before your next rep

 

The debrief is where the improvement actually happens. Having coached hundreds of candidates one-on-one, I can tell you the ones who improved fastest were rarely the ones doing the most cases.

 

If a partner is not always available, you can still get real value when you practice case interviews by yourself, as long as you read prompts aloud and resist scrolling ahead to the answer. Pair solo reps with live cases whenever someone is free.

 

Peer feedback also has a ceiling, usually somewhere around your fifth or sixth case. My interview coaching pairs you with a former Bain interviewer who can name the specific habit costing you the offer.

 

Is the Marshall Casebook Good for MBB Interview Prep?

 

The Marshall casebook is acceptable supplementary practice for MBB interviews, but it should not be your first stop. Its cases build the same core muscles every casebook builds, yet it lacks the difficulty ratings, firm tags, and volume that make the strongest casebooks worth deep practice.

 

Compare it against what else is free and you can see the gap clearly.

 

Casebook	Difficulty ratings	Firm tagging	One-click download
Marshall	No	No	No
MIT Sloan 2020	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kellogg 2020	Yes	Partial	Yes
Columbia 2021	Yes, across three skills	Partial	Yes

 

The bigger problem is what the front matter teaches. Older casebooks trained candidates to pull a named template off the shelf for every prompt, and firms now treat that as a signal you cannot think for yourself.

 

What top firms want instead is a structure built for the specific problem in front of you, with buckets that are MECE and driver-based rather than borrowed. That skill is the difference between passing a round and getting cut in the first ten minutes.

 

If you want to learn how to build a custom structure for any prompt instead of reciting case interview frameworks from memory, my case interview course walks you through the method in as little as 7 days.

 

The casebook also skips everything that now sits around the case. It teaches nothing about online assessments, and it will not get you ready to deliver a tight McKinsey PEI story under pressure.

 

Fit carries roughly half your score at most firms, so leaving it until the final week is a mistake I watched cost strong casers their offers. My fit interview course covers 98% of consulting fit questions in a few hours, which frees your remaining time for casing.

 

What Mistakes Do Candidates Make With the Marshall Casebook?

 

Most mistakes come from treating a thin student casebook as a complete study plan. Four errors show up again and again in the candidates I coach.

 

Mistake #1: Downloading only half of it

 

The older Marshall material is split into two files, and plenty of candidates grab the first one and stop. Check whether a second part exists before you conclude the casebook is short on cases.

 

Mistake #2: Memorizing the framework primer

 

The template structures in the front matter were written for an interview format that firms have moved past. Reading them is fine, but internalizing them actively trains the habit McKinsey and BCG screen against.

 

Mistake #3: Trusting the sample answers as a benchmark

 

These solutions were written by students who passed cases the year before, not by interviewers who scored them. Use them to check your logic, and never assume a sample answer represents what a top score looks like.

 

Mistake #4: Skipping the arithmetic

 

Reading past the calculations is the fastest way to feel prepared while staying slow. Every number in the book is a free rep, and building real speed with case interview math ends more interviews than weak structure does.

 

The Marshall casebook is worth downloading, but only once you understand what it is: a small, hard-to-find set of student-written prompts that adds volume to a plan you built elsewhere. Work through two or three stronger casebooks first, then use Marshall cases for extra reps, and drill each one with real timing and an honest debrief so the practice actually shows up in the room.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Is the Marshall casebook free?

 

Yes. The Marshall casebook was built by student volunteers in the Marshall Consulting & Strategy Club and was never sold. Older editions circulate publicly on document-sharing sites, and current editions are distributed to club members at USC. You do not need to pay for it, though some hosting sites will ask you to register.

 

How many cases are in the Marshall casebook?

 

No Marshall edition publishes a headline case count, which is unusual among school casebooks. The older material circulates as two separate parts labeled Case Book 1 and Case Book 2, and the 2022 edition adds preparation material and interview resources alongside its cases. Open the file and count the case prompts before you plan your practice schedule.

 

Is the Marshall casebook good for MBB interviews?

 

It is acceptable supplementary practice, not a primary source. The cases give you reps on structuring and math, but the front matter teaches a template-first approach that McKinsey, BCG, and Bain now screen against. Work through two or three stronger casebooks first, then use Marshall cases for extra volume.

 

Do you need to be a USC student to use the Marshall casebook?

 

No. The club built the casebook for its own members, but older editions circulate publicly and the cases work for any candidate. Structuring, math, and synthesis are tested the same way whether you are an MBA student, an undergraduate, or an experienced hire.

 

How does the Marshall casebook compare to the Wharton or Kellogg casebooks?

 

Kellogg and Wharton publish larger, better-organized case banks with difficulty ratings and clear sequencing. The Marshall casebook is thinner and harder to sort by skill, so it works better as a source of extra prompts than as the spine of a study plan. You can find both alongside dozens of other free case interview examples.

 

Which firms recruit USC Marshall MBAs for consulting?

 

USC Marshall lists McKinsey, Bain, Kearney, Deloitte, EY-Parthenon, PwC, KPMG, and several technology consulting arms among the employers of its Class of 2025 full-time MBAs. BCG and L.E.K. appear in the internship employer lists. Consulting carried a $167,211 average starting salary for that class, the highest of any industry.

 

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